


For Who Goes Up Your Winding Stair

by Zippit



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Born Without/Lacking Soulmate-Identifying Mark, F/M, Gen, Red Room (Marvel), Soulmate-Identifying Mark Is Damaged, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, soulmates being born in different time periods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-10 02:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/pseuds/Zippit
Summary: Natalia Romanova's life has been defined by her soulmark from beginning to end. It's been comfort, pain, and salvation all rolled into one. That doesn't stop the Red Room from erasing it from her skin or her memory. Until the day she meets Steve Rogers and nothing in her life is ever the same again.





	For Who Goes Up Your Winding Stair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



> Written for the 2017 Soul Exchange. Title from The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt.
> 
> Thank you for the awesome prompts!
> 
> I love soulmarks and seeing how they affect our favorite Avengers is always fascinating. This turned into more of a Natasha introspective than I was expecting. I have a feeling that I'm not quite done with this universe yet. I hope this still captures what you were wanting to see with the various tags.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, flipflop_diva!

> _Despite rigorous selection protocols, the subject, Natalia Romanova, carries the brand of a soulmark. Unusual for one of her age, but not unheard of. The situation will have to be carefully monitored if she progresses within the program. While contingency plans are in place, failures will be ill-tolerated._
> 
> _17.12.1989_

Natalia is five and small and scared. She wants to go home. She wants her ragged ballerina doll. They hadn’t let her bring it with her. Natalia had been poked and prodded. Her skin had been scrubbed and scrubbed. Firm but gentle hands had helped her through it all until she was finally clothed in a gray set of sleep clothes. Her still damp hair curled against her shoulders. She stood shivering in front of a woman. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a severe bun and her hands were clasped in front of her on the desktop as she peered at Natalia over the rim of her glasses.

She glances at something to the side while Natalia fidgets. She wants to sleep. She wants to find somewhere small and dark she can hide in. The lights in the room make her squint if she dared to look around. They reflect too bright into her eyes off the floor.

She swallows the soft hiccup that could turn into a cry if she let it. Her throat hurts. It hurts to swallow and it makes her want to cough. She hadn’t been offered anything and hadn’t wanted to ask in case it got her in trouble. All she tastes is how clean she is. How everything is so clean and quiet still.

The woman makes a soft noise and Natalia looks at her. She’s wearing something blue. There’s metal glints in her ears and Natalia remembers she wanted to wear pretty things in her ears too. She curls her toes into the soft tight weave of carpet under her feet. It’s better than the tile she’d had to stand on forever while they scrubbed her skin raw. Especially over that spot on the side of her hip. She didn’t know what that spot was. It was hard to tell what it was. To Natalia, it looked like an ice cube nestled into her skin. Something she traced her fingers over when she needed comfort. Now she fisted her hand over it and tried not to fidget too obviously but her legs were tired and she hadn’t slept in forever.

The woman looks at her again. “Hmmph, you’ll do for now. You meet the rest of our requirements.” She pauses then leans forward to peer at her more closely. “You’ll do me proud, won’t you, darling?”

Natalia blinks slowly at the woman then nods rapidly. She won’t disappoint this woman.

~*~*~*~

Soulmarks were a pesky thing. Ida tapped her chin as she watches the latest child be lead out of the acceptance chamber into the depths of the Academy. The child was incredibly young to have her mark already. It wasn’t unheard of, simply uncommon. Maybe they had gathered her at a young enough age it wouldn’t have an influence later in life. But that was the thing. Failure was not an option.

The Wolf Spider program had flourished under Zola’s hand. The Black Widow program was comparable, but Ida aimed to do better than to simply merit mentioning in the same sentence. She’d sought this appointment much to the confusion of a majority of the upper leadership. Her bid to shape the program from within was finally beginning. She wasn’t going to let her recall from the field turn into the demotion so many others let it. Ambition could be turned in a multitude of ways.

If nothing else, her clashes with Peggy Carter had proven that.

Back to the child, soulmarks would continually be an issue until their Graduation. There was simply no avoiding it. Something about this one pinged something in Ida. The unconscious self-preservation instincts or was it merely the red hair? It wasn’t a common color. Everything about her was slightly uncommon. It could end up being a boon or a disaster.

There was no telling at this early initial stage. All her instincts told her was to pay attention. This class of Widows would be different than the rest. She could let that possibility unspool in front of her or her other option was to err with caution and strike before the forge was even readied. Ida hadn’t reached her position without taking calculated risks.

Let the fires be stoked.

* * *

> _Soulmarks appear most commonly during adolescence. It is speculated that their appearance coincides with the extensive changes occurring within one’s body. That does not explain the appearance of soulmarks earlier or later in life. Or why some do not have soulmarks for their entire lives._
> 
> _Even with the Red Room’s many decades of extensive research into soulmarks, little more is known. A review of subject documentation within the various program iterations reveals nothing more than the wide array of possibilities unique to each subject and their partners. What has been determined is that the soulmarks are dynamic, reflecting the changes in the partner’s life. Meaning is difficult to determine until the partner has been identified. As to how the soulmarked partners are to meet, that is even more of a mystery._
> 
> _Evidenced by the current crop of Black Widows. Every single one of them has a soulmark branded onto their skin. But interestingly, Romanova’s hasn’t changed in all the time she’s been within the Academy. What might that mean?_
> 
> _09.05.1997_

Natalia doesn’t talk about her soulmark. It’s unremarkable. It doesn’t change like the other girls. It’s still on her hip. Still as obscured as it was when she first paid careful attention to it when she was younger. She’d rather hear about the ones the other girls have. The ones that change every week or every month or at all, no matter how minuscule the change. No change goes unnoticed.

Like tonight, they’ve earned the right to have the lights on later than usual in their room. Their wrists are still cuffed to the beds, artfully hidden under pillows and blankets. Yelena is in the bed across from Natalia and her blue eyes sparkle with life. Her mark changed earlier in the week. It had been a tangled swirl of darkness, like a nebula, but now it’d grown threads sparking outward from it’s position in the small of Yelena’s back. It looked more like a cloud of atoms.

Natalia was more interested in the feeling of the change when it happened. She bites her lip as she lets Yelena babble on about it. Nodding in the appropriate spots to get her to continue.

“It’s warm! It spreads through you from that spot. It’s a flash of heat that fades and it’s never painful.” 

Yelena is practically glowing with it. With the possibilities of what it could mean and who it could be. If they’re near or somewhere far away or how old the person is. Natalia envies her and the distraction a changing mark provides them. They have their studies and their training and everything else is few and far between. Anything more would be excess and undeserved. But these marks are wholly theirs and don’t undergo the same evaluation. It’s a part of them as much as their hair or eye color.

“Don’t worry, Talia. Yours will change one day too.”

Yelena gives her a smile and Natalia returns it with a small one of her own. No one can be sure of that. Their teachers taught them to not trust in anything but their skills and their training. Even relying on one another wasn’t a failsafe. They’d had that demonstrated quite clearly in their last exercise. Madame B had worn a holomask to mimic Irina and felled them one by one as they attempted to infiltrate the training tower. Natalia and Yelena had been the last two standing, fighting back to back to contain false Irina. To no avail in the end, but Natalia believes there’d been a hint of approval in Madame B’s eyes when Natalia had been the last to fall.

Natalia shifts on the bed, curling up into herself. “I don’t know. It’s not so bad, Lena. It’s as familiar to me as everything else about me.”

She doesn’t voice the worry that her soulmate might be dead. They haven’t changed in the however many years since she’s become aware of her mark. That can’t mean anything good. Can it? She’s wondered what it’s meant for years now. Turned the thought over in her mind and attempted to come at it from every direction like they’d been taught. She sees no redeeming feature in having this thing on her skin with no chance at fulfilling its potential. She doesn’t know if soulmark removal is a possibility. If hers continues to be unchanged then she might need to research it.

She moves her hand to her hip and presses her fingers into the spot where her soulmark lies. Please change. Please give her a sign that she’s not untethered in this world and different from the rest of the girls.

* * *

> _An unexpected, but welcome, side effect of the Red Room’s variant on Erskine’s super soldier serum is the erasure of the subject’s soulmark if the subject is able to withstand the systemic changes wrought upon their body. Acceptance of the serum is never duplicated from one subject to the next. Some have more…complicated trials while others merely seem to sleep. Refinement of the procedure only provides for a small measure of reduced distress._
> 
> _Impaired memory formation and revision also accompanies the procedure, blurring the subject’s memory of their soulmark and the associated emotions. Remarkably, this memory reprocessing encompasses the subject’s whole lived experience up until this point. Another unexpected boon of the process. It reduces the subject’s loyalty to factors outside of the Academy to essentially zero. Attempts at introducing the serum earlier in the program haven’t proven successful. Subjects have either required termination or the caliber of their skills has been unacceptable._
> 
> _The current subjects, Belova and Romanova, have far exceeded our expectations in all categories. Their Graduation has been eagerly anticipated. Romanova’s soulmark continues to remain unchanged._
> 
> _06.05.2002_

Natalia wakes up groggy and disoriented. She scans the room while testing her body’s response. No immediate threat. Her mind’s fuzzy, unable to hold onto a single thought other than survival. She’s unbound, hands and legs free, but dressed in a flimsy gown. A medical procedure, perhaps? She turns her head slowly and sees nothing out of place. Her hip aches like a piece of her flesh has been lasered out. She carefully slides her fingers across the spot and feels unbandaged, unblemished skin. She bites her lip and attempts to move upright.

A groan breaks free instead and she slumps back to the bed as a wave of dizziness makes the room spin. She attempts to swallow and the dryness makes her cough. Her lips don’t want to move but then there’s suddenly a cool plastic straw against her lips. She takes several small sips before she lets it slip from her lips. “What…happen—?”

She squints up at the person at her bedside. It’s Madame B with a smile on her face. The smile chills Natalia more effectively than a blast of cold air fresh from the winter mountains. It focuses her mind and moments trickle back into her mind. The end of training, Graduation, the medical procedure that capped off their emergence into the adult world.

“Oh, darling, you did wonderful. Everything went exactly like we expected. Even better.”

Madame B’s hand cups her cheek fondly. Natalia manages to avoid flinching at the touch. She’s better trained than to let such a visceral reaction slip. She brushes a strand of hair off her face then holds Natalia’s hand within her own.

“What about Yelena?” She searches Madame B’s eyes.

She shakes her head dismissively and squeezes Natalia’s hand.

“She did well and she’s resting just like you. You’ll see her again.”

The knot of worry nestled in Natalia’s breastbone eases somewhat. Lena made it through too. They’d take on the world together like they’d taken on everything else in the room. Likely at each other’s throats the majority of the time, but the enemy you know rather than the enemy you don’t.

“I have such plans for you.”

Natalia gazes at Madame B and lets the headache throbbing behind her eyes pull her back under.

* * *

She hears about Captain America’s recovery from Coulson and from Clint. It’s a passing footnote at the time. She wasn’t going to be dealing with Captain America any time soon. She had other missions and other priorities to deal with first. It wasn’t her forte assembling a team. Her skill set was much more suited to solo work and intelligence gathering. So imagine her surprise when Fury had approached her and said he wanted her on the team with Stark and everyone else.

“I need my best set of agents on hand, Romanoff. Who knows what kind of shit Stark’s going to stir up. I need to know I’ve got all my cards in play.”

Natasha had given him a look, taken the mission briefing folder, and skimmed the details. Fury had let her read it in peace. By the time she’d tossed it back down on his desk, he’d leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands together in his lap. She’d given him another arch look and sighed.

“Fine. But on an operational basis only. Until the unit’s up and running, I’m hands off.”

Fury had waved his hands in a broad sweeping gesture that was supposed to read as magnanimous but simply came off as slightly condescending. She’d rolled her eyes at him and left his office.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered. All of Fury’s grand plans and her own reluctance had been tossed by the wayside the moment Loki and the cube had entered the picture and heartstole Clint into doing his bidding.

Their meeting on the helicarrier had been simple, professional. Nothing to it other than giving Steve Rogers the lay of the land and putting his abilities to use when it came to rescuing Clint. So what if they’d had an instant rapport? It was who Natasha was. She was supposed to build that kind of trust with everyone she met. It was part and parcel of her skill set.

After it was all said and done with Clint back to himself, maybe she’d been a little curious about how Steve lived up to his reputation. Everything she’d seen had pointed to the fact the man was every bit as good and noble as the stories made him out to be. It made her want to keep prodding, much like Tony, to see what would happen. It wasn’t a nice impulse but she’d never been believed to be a nice person.

She’d stuck around, for Clint’s sake mostly. The psych evals after what amounted to a mind wipe were never ending. Fury still kept her busy with a mission here or there but didn’t drag her too far from Clint. She needed to know he was processing the mental gymnastics properly. Even if he wasn’t, there was only so much she could do for him but she could be there for the inevitable questions. The moments where he wanted to know what it was like to be unmade and remade and how to figure out who you are after it’s all over.

It’s a period of several months before they’re willing to let Clint out of the reach of SHIELD’s shrinks. They finally send him on a simple recon mission overseas. Without her. Because they want her to work with Steve on more vital assignments. It’s not what either her or Clint want but the thing about being the best at what they do is adapting. The mission only required a single agent with infiltration capabilities supported by the usual arrangement of tactical teams. It didn’t need Natasha. She’d wished him well and told him to come back in one piece this time or so help her.

Working with Steve’s going to be fun because Natasha’s made a pastime of annoying Steve Rogers about his love life in the time she’s spent grounded. It’s endearing the way he can’t find a way to tell her to quit it. He simply lets her talk up her suggestion and shuts her down at the end of the exchange. There’s plenty of amusement to his tone each time so she keeps at it. She’s going to make sure the man actually enjoys himself in the 20th century instead of staying locked in his SHIELD apartment.

Natasha hasn’t thought about her soulmark in years. What it might’ve been, who could have hers, how they would meet. It was a constant irritation during her SHIELD intake when it was all they wanted to know about. She’s still not sure she buys into them. Oh, she expects everyone has them unless some sort of tragedy’s happened, but how do you go about meeting your soulmate? How do two soulmarked people even begin to find each other? How does one trust in fate, in life, bringing two people together?

She also makes it a point not to go digging about other people’s. It’s all a matter of personal preference and she’ll listen to Clint wax poetic about his or eavesdrop on the loud conversation a few cubicles or tables over, but she won’t ask. Most of the time when she mentions she doesn’t have one of her own either a suspicious glint forms in their eyes or they look at her with pity. She’ll take the suspicion any day of the week.

But working with Steve day in and day out makes Natasha wonder who'd be paired with a man like him and even who'd be paired with someone like her. She wonders if it hadn’t been the illustrious Peggy Carter, the woman Steve still visits when he’s stateside, even if her niece’s been assigned his protection detail. But that detail hadn’t made it into the historical record and Steve hadn’t been very forthcoming on the matter either. She doesn’t envy him the readjustment to having your whole personal life story splashed across the history books and in museum exhibits.

She doesn’t think they’re anything alike until that moment on the rooftop with everyone out to kill them. They’re dangling the lackey over the rooftop but Steve has a reputation and Natasha does too. Because while Natasha knew there was steel and determination inside Steve, would he resort to her kind of measures? When the hard decisions had to be made who would he be? The glory soft hero that history loves to burnish and make gleam or something closer to earth, closer to the dirt of human lives.

He’d surprised her even if it wasn’t a true threat with Sam hovering in the background. It was a line she didn’t think Steve would cross. It had her wondering what else she’d gotten wrong about Steve but that had been before her trust in the world had been altered.

SHIELD, a lie and a shambles. Fury, unable, unwilling to trust her. What could Steve want in a friend like her?

It was almost a relief in the end when she’d dumped all of SHIELD’s files onto the web. Never mind the personal fallout. There’d be no more secrets. If anyone wanted to go looking, it was all out there. Steve could judge her based on the whole picture now.

Walking out of that Senate hearing, a new woman, a free woman, she’d known the only thing she could do now was send Steve on his way with what little intel she had on his best friend, the Winter Soldier.

It didn’t seem enough after everything. A paltry file with the few leads she’d chased down over the years. Names and whispers. Nothing substantial other than suspected kills and locations.

She’d wanted to stay. Learn what it was like to be Steve Roger’s friend but that way danger lies. She’d known it then and she knows it even more clearly now. She’d thankfully simply kissed him on the cheek and left. To redefine herself was the cover at the time and it’d been truer than she expected.

She’d ended up peeking at Steve’s SHIELD files in the end. After she’d left for Europe of course. She’d known most of it already. Steve wasn’t a man that had many secrets. An open book in too many ways. But the part that stuck out was his lack of a soulmark until he’d reemerged from the ice. A gilt backed hand mirror and a handgun decorated his lower back. An interesting contrast in objects.

Not Peggy Carter then. This person bound to Steve wasn’t born when he was. Maybe her niece then. What Natasha knows of Sharon would fit the bill. She expects the next time she contacts Steve or Sam there’ll be word of Steve finally dating.

* * *

After Wanda, after Ultron, Natasha refuses to even entertain the thought of soulmarks and soulmates. Because it’s a lie. It’s all a lie. From the concept to the promise to the happily ever after. She has too much red on her hands for it to be possible.

She hasn’t even told Clint the full extent of her vision. Hazy memories that she had to struggle for before had cleared up into crystal clarity. The training, the bonds, the memories. The soulmark on her hip.

Wanda’s powers were a contrary mix of telekinetic and telepathic but scrambling minds had dragged in something more primal. For Natasha it had also unlocked a truth she never wanted to know. One she didn’t believe in the slightest. It had to be the greatest cosmic joke out there.

She’d entered the Red Room with a documented soulmark of a structure obscured by a large swath of ice on her hip. It’d remained unchanged until her Graduation when the serum had wiped it from her body. Wanda’s vision had emblazoned it upon her hip again, if only in her mind, with the ice dissolved. The structure had been immediately recognizable after her long stint in New York. The Brooklyn bridge like in all the tourist pictures with Steve’s scuffed shield propped up against it.

Lies, it was all lies. Untruths instead of the truths of everything else in her mind. Wanda’s powers had merely sought out her deepest, unconscious desires, and dragged them into the light to taunt and tempt her.

In the weeks after, she’d felt scraped raw and too big for her skin. Jumping at shadows and nonexistent threats. Being caged in the confines of the Avengers facility while they built a new Avengers unit had done little for her. Channeling that into the grueling workouts she designed for them only brought a grim smirk to her lips.

Little by little she boxed it away, tucked it into the recesses of her mind to never be looked at again. She still tries to set Steve up with various people, Sharon especially, but he’s a little more firm about shutting her down, a little more perplexed why she keeps prodding him about this aspect of his life.

It was fine. She was fine. They’d settled into a friendship of sorts. She was his second and he her CO. It worked and they were quickly teaching Wanda everything she needed to function in the field effectively. It was going well so of course everything imploded.

The Winter Soldier, James Buchanan Barnes, decimated her life yet again. And didn’t even have the decency to remember her.

* * *

They’ve all gone to ground to deal with the fallout in different ways. She’s no longer on anyone’s side. The airport battle proved that. She trusts in Tony enough to believe he’ll fight for her, for the rest of them, to the best of his ability. At the same time, that ship had sailed with the signing of the Accords.

Natasha sits at the breakfast nook with a nondescript letter and a burner phone on the table in front of her. They look out of place on the light beige colored wood tabletop. The moisture lingering on her skin from her shower is quickly fading under the a/c’s chill. It’s early yet with the light beginning to filter through the windows while the musk of disuse hasn’t fully dissipated. It’s too dark for what feels like her life upending itself yet again. 

Natasha doesn’t know how Steve managed to get her this note. Or maybe it’s the new King of Wakanda’s resources being put to use. Either way, when she’d arrived at her safe house in the depths of the city, she’d received notice through her contacts that she had a message waiting.

Retrieval had been simple enough. An exchange of money and she’d carried the small nondescript box back with her a day earlier. It’d taken her this long to bring herself to read it. She sips absently at the lemon tea she’d brewed. At least it should help with the roiling of her stomach. It doesn’t stop the silence roaring in her ears.

> _I know you’re used to going this alone, but you don’t have to this time around. Call me if you need_ anything _, even if it’s just a friend._
> 
> _P.S. Natasha, I think it’s about time we talked about this. I’m done letting life get in the way._

Steve had included a sketch of his soulmark. It was a black gilt hand mirror like she’d read about before and etched into the mirror’s back was a spider. A black widow to be exact with its signature red hourglass glowing on the paper. It was placed carefully atop a handgun. The make and model one she preferred, if she wasn’t mistaken.

Natasha reaches out a barely trembling hand for the burner. She’s proud of herself for that. She could tell Steve a number of things. She wasn’t the only Black Widow. She wouldn’t be the only one that used that gun as her weapon of choice. He was simply projecting. She couldn’t be the one tied to his soulmark.

She keys the phone on and watches the screen come to life. She navigates into the Contacts section and highlights the only one listed. She rests her finger on the call button.

Love is for children.


End file.
